Isis Unveiled: chapter I (an axiom of hermetic philosophy)

“According to the claims of the Babylonian priests, corroborated by Eupolemus, the city of Babylon, owes its foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; they were the giants and they built the tower which is noticed in history.

These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their fathers, “the sons of God”, every instruction pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by the knowledge of the great years.

When we remember, moreover, that Plato in the Timaeus cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the great one of Oxyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the Heliakos was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.”